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Saturday, February 28, 2009

This Aint No Dud, Baby!

When I was a little girl my older sister had a board game called Mystery Date. She used to play this game with her best friend Virginia, and the strangest thing happened all the time. Virginia always seemed to get the "dud" date, and my sister always got the handsome date. I'm not sure if it was rigged or just the way it worked out, but the dud was so goofy looking and the fact that Virginia always seemed to get stuck with him, that it's a notable childhood memory for me. I tested the theory of it being rigged, and while my sister wasn't home I randomly spun the dial numerous times to open the door and see how often I'd get the dud. More often than not, I'd get the handsome dates. Now far be it from me to accuse my sister of sneaky-tricky-stuff, but I'm thinking the odds of poor Virginia getting the dud as often as she did, by pure random chance, were pretty low... if you know what I'm saying. Ahem.

The truth is, life is full of duds. Dud jobs, dud houses, dud cars, dud dates, and dud merchandise. It's just the way life goes. So, when something comes along that is NOT a dud, it's really good stuff.

Not long ago I needed to replace my dish sponge, and I'm a diehard scrubber sponge user. Now I know some folks are purely dish cloth users, and we could wage a war over which is better, cleaner, safer and smarter - but I wont go into that today. As for me, I must have the sponge (real sponge, not that phoney foam business) and a scrubber on the other side. When I worked for the city housing authority as a maintanence worker a million years ago, I had access to the BEST cleaning products available to the human race, and that's what they used. I immediately became a fan and have been set in my ways ever since.

I've skimped many times over the years and bought the cheap store brands when money was tight, but I always prefer the name brand kind, since they last longer and just work better. So recently when I had to replace my sponge, I looked over my choices. Now this may sound goofy to some people but I'm a stay at home mom and dish sponges matter. They're one of the tools of the trade and us stay at home moms take this stuff seriously.

While deliberating the cheap v. name brand dilema, I spotted something I'd never seen before. It looked like a regular scrubber sponge but the difference was the material that made up the scrubber side. It wasn't nylon or some other man made material, it was made of crushed walnut shells. What?! I'd never heard of such a thing, but I decided to give it a try. Long stay at home mom boring story short, I love this thing. Technically, they should reconsider a new marketing approach and stop calling it a scrubber sponge and call it a Breezer Sponge instead. You don't even really have to "scrub" with this little gem. You just gently glide it across the icky-stickies on your dishes and it picks it right off. It really is amazing. Less scrubbing on anything, at any time, is always a welcome break in my world.

One of the cool things that impressed me with this sponge, is that it uses natural ingredients to clean with. I love it when I find something like this, and that works this well. I have no idea how long these things have been available, years and years, for all I know*. I just know I just discovered them and they're fantastic. Now here's a funny little add-on. When I first took the sponge out of the plastic wrapper I thought "hmm, walnuts" and for some bizarre reason, assumed it would smell like walnuts. It sounds reasonable, yes? I sniffed the scrubber side of the sponge and WHEW BUBBA, it did not smell like walnuts. I do not recommend sniffing your sponge, unless you also heartily enjoy gagging.

Happy Sponging.

*Sometimes it takes a while for products to find their way to Canadian grocery store shelves, so this may also be one of those situations. It's sort of annoying, too, since there's never any real logic to it, such as in the case of Cap'n Crunch with Crunchberries. Oh, you mean you've never heard of crunchberries, o Canadian reader? Of course you haven't, because in Canada you cannot GET Cap'n Crunch with Crunchberries. I'm not sure why, it could be they're a controlled substance, or dangerous to children in some way. When I was a kid growing up in the states, Crunchberries were the only way! Poor Canadian kids have never had the pleasure, because the Canadian government has their eye on those crunchberries and they are NOT letting them across the border.